The pressure group's recently published 100-page report, Nucleaire: Comment en sortir?, presents a highly detailed plan of far-reaching energy saving measures that it says could enable the country that famously relies on nuclear power plants for 78% of its electricity to close them all down. It then advocates an energy efficient vision of France which uses other generation options - including fossil fuels.

The group's vision of electricity generation in a nuclear-free France relies chiefly on wind power, with aims to build 11.8 GWe of terrestrial wind power and 10 GWe of maritime wind power facilities in five years, rising to 24.3 GWe and 15 GWe respectively in ten years. At present France has only 2 GWe of wind powered generation, although the report points to Germany's current example of a wind fleet with the capacity to generate 20 GWe.

The burden of saving energy would have to fall heavily on French businesses and the public. The report suggests measures to replace incandescent lightbulbs, refrigerators and freezers with energy-efficient models, reduce the amount of energy wasted by electrical appliances left on standby, and fixing a maximum energy ceiling for industrial processes using electricity. It also calls for an end to the use of electricity for space and water heating, the prohibition of air conditioning in private homes and the imposition of a 19 degree C limit for room heating.

This might be regarded as "a loss of comfort and quality of life" in some quarters, says the report, "but we bet that if this relative discomfort eventually allowed [France] to leave nuclear then this [would] appear much more bearable."

Well at least the anti-nuclear group is being honest about a diminished quality of life without nuclear. I doubt the French citizens will go for it though.

Given the importance of Areva and EDF to the French economy this has zero chance of happening. Added to this, the French government has a social security liability that, as a percentage of GDP, dwarfs even the USA's social security liabilty. The French union movement is very militant, and very pro nuclear, especially considering the jobs it creates. If there were even a hint of anything like this getting a reading in Parliament, there would be riots on the streets of Paris.

Population reduction, forced or not, is often at the heart of some of these leftist philosophies and policies. For all of their faux concern for "the poor" and "the needy", they are, at heart, social Darwinists.

France phase out nuclear? France has benefited massively from their nuclear energy program. They're EXPORTING power. They don't have to resort to economically crippling energy rationing. While other countries are wondering how they could reign in hydrogen power or plug in hybrids, France sits back because they're all set for them.

Sure, they could ditch nuclear energy. All they'd have to do is cut back... a HUGE amount. They could also live in mud huts. They could also give up antibiotics and vaccines and telecommunications.

Why the hell would they want to? Nuclear has served them well. They made a very wise decision a while ago and have stuck with it. With the US had done the same..

Perhaps you all missed it but a recent report in the French newspaper Les Echos quotes Dominque Miallard, chairman of French grid management as saying that EDF is being forced "to import record levels of electricity" due to prolonged outages as the result of technical problems at French reactors. You know when you have a problem at a French reactor is usually winds up a generic industry problem affecting large sections of the fleet. 16% of the n-industry went off line.

As a consequence in October, France increased its imports of power by 143% and reduced its exports by 21%, and "the scenario is likely to repeat itself often this winter," according to Les Echos.

BTW, I was just up in Alberta for a week where the public is effectively mobilizing against AREVA efforts to nuclear power the petroleum industry up there on the tar sands. Really dirty business. So much for that "Clean Air" motto.Just more of the same CON (coal, oil, nuclear) job.

Popular posts from this blog

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution. In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…